lled until it burst into the flower of
humanity, the knowledge of God. I cannot tell the shape of the door
by which the Lord entered into that house, and took everlasting
possession of it. I cannot even tell in what shape he appeared
himself in Gibbie's thoughts--for the Lord can take any shape that
is human. I only know it was not any unhuman shape of earthly
theology that he bore to Gibbie, when he saw him with "that inward
eye, which is the bliss of solitude." For happily Janet never
suspected how utter was Gibbie's ignorance. She never dreamed that
he did not know what was generally said about Jesus Christ. She
thought he must know as well as she the outlines of his story, and
the purpose of his life and death, as commonly taught, and therefore
never attempted explanations for the sake of which she would
probably have found herself driven to use terms and phrases which
merely substitute that which is intelligible because it appeals to
what in us is low, and is itself both low and false, for that which,
if unintelligible, is so because of its grandeur and truth.
Gibbie's ideas of God he got all from the mouth of Theology
himself, the Word of God; and to the theologian who will not be
content with his teaching, the disciple of Jesus must just turn his
back, that his face may be to his Master.

So, teaching him only that which she loved, not that which she had
been taught, Janet read to Gibbie of Jesus, talked to him of Jesus,
dreamed to him about Jesus; until at length--Gibbie did not think to
watch, and knew nothing of the process by which it came about--his
whole soul was full of the man, of his doings, of his words, of his
thoughts, of his life. Jesus Christ was in him--he was possessed by
him. Almost before he knew, he was trying to fashion his life after
that of his Master.

Between the two, it was a sweet teaching, a sweet learning. Under
Janet, Gibbie was saved the thousand agonies that befall the
conscientious disciple, from the forcing upon him, as the thoughts
and will of the eternal Father of our spirits, of the ill expressed
and worse understood experiences, the crude conjectures, the vulgar
imaginations of would-be teachers of the multitude. Containing
truth enough to save those of sufficiently low development to
receive such teaching without disgust, it contains falsehood enough,
but for the Spirit of God, to ruin all nobler--I mean all childlike
natures, utterly; and many such it has gone f